© 2022 Nicola Petrara
SCHIENE
SCHIENE (backs) is a photographic project started in the summer of 2021.
I was about 7 years old when one afternoon my mother asked me to come into the bathroom and help her wash his back.
I was highly embarrassed! It was the first time I had the perception of the nakedness of a body. I passed the sponge over my mother's back slowly, all the time she didn't turn around and I imagined her face, as if I didn't know her.
SCHIENE is the re-enactment of that perhaps traumatic episode. Just as I was looking for my mother's face, I would like the viewer to imagine the faces of these women, who deny themselves but at the same time show themselves.
Furthermore, the back is the only part of our body that we cannot look at directly. This always happens through an interlocutor: a reflection, a photograph for example. Or someone watches it for us.
Without realizing it, I think this work is a dedication I made to my mother.
